Professor Douglas Porch, of NPS, has a new book due out at the end of July 'Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War', which is likely to arouse interest, if not controversy.
From the summary:Link:http://www.amazon.com/Counterinsurge...=douglas+porch and http://www.amazon.co.uk/Counterinsur...=Douglas+PorchDouglas Porch's sweeping history of counterinsurgency campaigns carried out by the three 'providential nations' of France, Britain and the United States, ranging from nineteenth-century colonial conquests to General Petraeus's 'Surge' in Iraq, challenges the contemporary mythologising of counterinsurgency as a humane way of war. The reality, he reveals, is that 'hearts and minds' has never been a recipe for lasting stability and that past counterinsurgency campaigns have succeeded not through state-building but by shattering and dividing societies while unsettling civil-military relations.
(Elsewhere)The reality, he reveals, is that 'hearts and minds' has never been a recipe for lasting stability.
A very partial review by a Guardian journalist, which includes this:Link:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...oad?CMP=twt_guThe book came from listening to his students, many of whom are seasoned officers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and who repeatedly told him that COIN hadn't a hope of changing the countries for the better. And when he lost two students to "green on blue attacks", he felt an obligation to expose the official doctrine and, in some way, to stop scholarship being militarised.
Professor Porch's NPS entry:http://www.nps.edu/Academics/Schools...lty/porch.html
I have read and enjoyed two of his books on French military history.
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